COLOMBO, 29 November 2007 — Nineteen people were killed in the Sri Lankan capital in two bomb attacks yesterday, the military said, a day after the rebel Tamil Tiger vowed the rebels would fight on for independence.
At least 17 people were killed and 43 injured when a bomb believed planted by Tamil rebels exploded on the outskirts of the capital, officials said.
“Seventeen people were brought in dead and at least 43 have been injured,” the spokeswoman at Kalubowila Hospital, located near where the explosion took place, told AFP by telephone.
A bus caught fire as a result of the explosion, which came hours after a suicide bomber blew herself up killing herself and one person besides injuring three others outside the office of a Tamil minister, the Defense Ministry said.
The hospital spokeswoman said more casualties were feared from the blast outside a clothing store, the latest violence in the island’s long-running ethnic conflict.
“According to the available information, the bomb exploded at the Nugegoda Junction... and a bus caught fire after the attack,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement, blaming the attack on Tamil Tiger rebels.
Police at the scene said the blast occurred as security personnel employed by the clothing store searched a woman’s handbag.
“We are still investigating to see if it’s a suicide bomber or whether the bomb was inside her bag... there’s lot of chaos at the scene. It’s rush-hour traffic,” a senior police officer told AFP by telephone.
Tiger suicide bombers usually don jackets with a manual detonating device around waist level, police said.
Earlier in the day, a disabled Tamil Tiger suicide bomber with explosives concealed in her bra blew herself up outside the office of the Tamil minister, killing his secretary, the Sri Lankan military said.
Two men from the minister’s security staff were also wounded in the blast, one seriously.
Officials said they believed the attack was the work of the Tamil Tigers and aimed at Social Welfare Minister Douglas Devananda, a vocal opponent of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Tamil suicide bomber was disabled with polio and appeared to have wired her bra to explode when it was tampered with.
Yesterday’s blasts came one day after Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran declared that Sri Lankan peace efforts were a waste of time and vowed to strike back at the island’s “genocidal” government.
“Those who plan to destroy the Tamil nation will in the end be forced to face their own destruction,” he said in his annual policy speech from a jungle hideout in his northern fiefdom.
On Monday the island’s defense secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, told AFP that his forces were now going all out to kill Prabhakaran and recapture the north of the country from LTTE forces. The 35-year-old conflict, which has left tens of thousands dead, has escalated since late 2005 when a truce began to unravel.
